Smart India Hackathon 2017

The 'Smart India Hackathon 2017' is a pan-India 36-hour nonstop digital programming competition which will take place in more than 20 centres simultaneously. Each participating college can nominate up to three teams, each having six team members, which can belong to different courses or semesters within the same college.

Each team will need to have at least one female team member, to encourage women coders. Each team will also have the option of choosing up to two mentors, who can be faculty, alumni or any other expert in their circles.

Each of the participating 25+ ministries and government departments will give away prizes to top three teams, so 75 teams will stand a chance to win cash rewards as well as a chance to work with those ministries and departments for up to six months to execute their winning solution.

For every ministry and department, the first prize will be of Rs.100, 000, second prize of Rs.75, 000 and third prize of Rs.50, 000.

Some of the ministries and departments participating in the Hackathon include Railways, External Affairs, Defence, Civil Aviation, Indian Space Research Organization, Department of Atomic Energy, etc.

The initiative will help institutionalize a model for harnessing the creativity and skills of youth for nation-building. Some of the problem statements made public today include developing a dynamic HealthMap that can tap into online data sources to ensure rapid response to disease outbreaks such as H1N1, dengue and chikungunya through faster information flow between public health systems; a digitized platform to monitor the migration of children from one village, cluster, block, district or state to another to introduce interventions to minimize school dropouts in the middle of an academic year; a digital diagnostic tool to measure the learning abilities of students in various classes and subjects; a cost effective solution of quick disbursal of railway tickets to save time for passengers as well as plug revenue leakages in unreserved ticketing; developing efficient security algorithms, analytics tools and integrated video solutions to enhance video surveillance through voice enabled activation, switching views, alarm verification, onsite monitoring and risk management to reduce crime rates; an imaging technology to identify medicinal plants based on morphology and trace their geographical location to help practitioners of AYUSH system; and, a web-based application to pool data on all drug manufacturing units to validate their authentic GMP, ISO and other certifications, quality of drugs manufactured, inventory and rate of preparation of classical and patent-proprietary medicines. The full list of problem statements is available online on Smart Hackathon 2017 website.